Their job was to try to contain and control a chaotic and at times unpredictable anti-Government demonstration, peppered with disruptive elements, that had taken over Parliament grounds and its surrounds.

The officer in charge at the scene, Inspector Pat Thomas, acknowledged there had been some trying situations, but said frontline staff had shown exceptional professionalism and maintained their morale.

Along with the usual onslaught of verbal abuse and cuts and scrapes, a vehicle was driven at a group of officers, others had faeces flung at them and they all endured one of Wellington’s wettest days during the protest, which was entering its fourth week at the time Police News went to print.

Also at that stage, at least five officers had tested positive for Covid-19 after working at the protest. Frontline staff were required to undergo a rapid antigen test every 72 hours but to take one immediately if they were symptomatic.

One officer who worked long shifts at Parliament over a few days said the hours had been challenging, especially having to get there for 4.45am starts after a late-notice shift change.

But more taxing than that, she said, was the nature of this particular protest and what she and her colleagues had to put up with, including “getting yelled at by people who are quite misinformed, in my view”.

“I’ve done some protest work before, but it was nothing like this. Some of the protests I’ve worked before, I could sort of see where they were coming from, but I can’t really agree that there is satellite radiation coming off the Beehive and that I’m going to get Aids from having the Covid vaccine.”

For her, making up the numbers on the forward line, it was a matter of “keeping a straight face, while being very, very tired”.

Along with the argy-bargy of frontline duty, there were also stories of officers on the forward line playing “paper scissors rock” with a protester and throwing a basketball with a kid, but it was at night that the darker elements emerged.

Senior Sergeant Eddie Lyttle, who worked on a late-shift rapid response team (RRT) at the surrounds of Parliament, said his team had been involved in clashes with some “exceptionally aggressive” protesters every night they were on duty.

In some cases, they were outnumbered three or four to one and the police line was broken until back-up from other RRTs arrived.

“There has been a lot of aggression towards our staff, and it could have got ugly, but we managed to get the numbers in to help.

“When we started to move cars, the protesters got very vocal about that. Every time we showed up in force, they fronted us, got in our grill and spat and yelled and carried on while we were trying to do our job. Nothing is easy, everything has to be fought for, but fortunately there have been few injuries overall.”

Because of the sheer number of staff having to be rotated in for duty at the protest not all of them are PSU (public safety unit)-trained and, Eddie said, “many people didn’t realise the environment they were facing”.

When it comes to facing off with protesters, he said, there needed to be a very robust tactical element to the police response, adding “the team that I worked with was outstanding, brilliant”.

Pat agreed that, as far as protests in New Zealand go, this one was “unprecedented, challenging and frustrating… it certainly hasn’t been one out of the operations book”.

It started as a countrywide convoy of vehicles to Wellington and followed similar demonstrations in Ottawa, Canada – the inspiration behind the events in Wellington and smaller protests in other centres.

For three weeks, Canadian protesters, led by a convoy of truckers, had brought their capital to a standstill, taking over the streets around the parliament and blocking border crossings, demanding an end to the Trudeau government’s Covid-19 restrictions. Police eventually swept through the area in riot gear to clear the protesters, four days after Ottawa’s Police chief resigned following criticism of how he had managed the occupation.

Likewise in Wellington, the protest converged on the lawn outside the Beehive and thoroughfares were blocked off with vehicles – up to 800 at one point. The disruption led to the closure of some nearby businesses and schools.

A trespass notice from the Speaker of the House was not enough to force the protesters to leave, nor was turning on the sprinklers, which was not a tactic endorsed by police. Three days later, police pushed back, resulting in 120 arrests and several injuries to officers. It also spurred more protesters to travel to Wellington.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster acknowledged that the arrests had inflamed the situation, leading police to take a de-escalation strategy, something Pat said the frontline staff agreed had been the best approach.

“I think we did very well with what we had and what we had in front of us. The guys on the ground just wanted to know what they would be doing tomorrow. It’s hard to keep everyone informed when you’re unsure yourself.”

However, he said, morale had been maintained among the staff in a challenging situation. “One of those nights was the wettest day in Wellington all year and the guys were standing there in that crap all night. There wasn’t a complaint in sight.”

Hundreds of officers were involved in policing the protests, on regular rotations, but there were resourcing and officer welfare concerns, especially in the third week when the level of violence directed at officers increased significantly.

Police had been directed to install concrete block barriers to try to contain the size of the protest. Officers were lucky to avoid serious injury after a person drove a car directly at them. The driver was arrested. The following day, officers began carrying riot shields and wearing goggles on top of their face masks for extra protection.

Police Association president Chris Cahill noted that Police had no choice but to change their tactics when faced with an increased level of violence.

By February 23, Police reported that some people and vehicles were voluntarily leaving the protest at Parliament and said “constructive discussions” had been held between Police and the protesters.

It seemed unlikely at that point that the discussions had encompassed the type of protesters the night shift were facing.

On March 2, police cleared the protest from the grounds of Parliament.